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Do you back up your save games?

Do you back up the save files of your favorite games?

  • Yes, religiously. I even backup my backups.

  • Yes, but I rely on cloud save services or other automatic backups for that.

  • Only sometimes do I back up my saves, like for the best games.

  • Almost never. If I lose them I lose them.

  • Nope, not ever. I like to live on the edge!


Results are only viewable after voting.

AW8

Arcane
Joined
Mar 1, 2013
Messages
1,852
Location
North of Poland
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
I always forget to backup savegames of games I am currently playing (in case of storage device failure or accidental deletion), but for RPGs with long playtime I always tend to back up at least the final save.

If I read about a certain way to complete a quest but can't remember if I did that or not, I can boot up the old savegame and check how and if I completed that quest. Likewise I can check what kind of character I made so I can make a completely different character if I replay the game.

Savegames tend to be very small so backing them up is like 5 seconds of work and 5 megabytes of storage required. Even if they end up collecting dust it doesn't matter.
 

Terra

Cipher
Joined
Sep 4, 2016
Messages
896
I try to mainly before reformats, there's still too much variation in where games store their saves and you can't rely on cloud backups to support older titles. The problem's become worse over the years as developers use a variety of locations to store save data:
-is it in Users/Name/AppData (3 possible subdirs)
-is it in MyDocs
-is it in MyDocs/MyGames
-is it in the game's install dir

And it could still be stored in some other bizarre location. I've lost too many in-progress game saves (and these are the only ones I really care about) due to forgetting to backup and restore one of the above magic locations in prior reformats, so I generally rely on GaveSaveManager to nab all the saves before I format. Cloud saves are great, when they're set up correctly by the devs.
 

mk0

Learned
Joined
Jun 28, 2020
Messages
113
Only if the games in question offer benefits for keeping your saves, such as NG+ modes or other unlockables.
For games where you just clear the content and have nothing left to do after, there is no point in storing saves.
 

overly excitable young man

Guest
Not once have i ever lost my save games. So why backup?
 

Risewild

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 23, 2018
Messages
491
Location
Australia
Never.

If later there's a sequel where we can import previous games safe files, I'll just play the previous game again, or I just don't care about it.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I don't format my hard drives, the oldest folders on my computer are 15 years old by now, and there probably are some old saves on that hard drive too :M

I reinstall my system only when absolutely necessary so I don't need to backup saves. And I tend to restart most games from the beginning anyway if too much time has passed between my last attempt and now. If it's been a year since I last played an RPG, it's new game time. For strategy games with lengthy campaigns they usually track your progress on the player profile anyway so you don't need to backup individual level saves either.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
off the top of my head?
Witcher 3.

actually, deadfire is more recent

I remember it barely making any difference in the Witcher games. DA2 and DA:I let you pick pretty good world states, so I never cared there either. Haven't played PoE2 yet. I do think it was very important for Mass Effect though, and I "backed those up" I guess.
 

Ovplain

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 23, 2009
Messages
1,890
Location
Down by the riverside
RPG Wokedex
All saves, more or less. I seem to even have backups for games like Control, Subnautica, Mark of the Ninja, Sinking City, Planescape. For games where, even if I do eventually go back and play them again, I'm pretty sure I'll be starting from scratch anyway.
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,169
Some modern games have already saveslots as a paid DLCs though. In future you will be not able to backup anything anymore.
 

Nano

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2016
Messages
4,647
Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
I have my Mankind Divided saves backed up because there was talk that the next DX game would allow save importing. Still holding out hope.
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,169
I have my Mankind Divided saves backed up because there was talk that the next DX game would allow save importing. Still holding out hope.
The next DX game will no have a save/load game possibility at all. You will have to play it without saving from the start to the end (It is to facilitate immersion.)
 

Wilian

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 14, 2011
Messages
2,819
Divinity: Original Sin
people who don't do backups are weird

of save files for games you don't ever plan to play again? only autists do that
like 2 in 3 RPGs have sequels where you can import a prior save to affect the gameworld

What was the last game that allowed this, Wizardry 8 in 2001? Modern RPGs don't do that
off the top of my head?
Witcher 3.

actually, deadfire is more recent

But those games have cloud saves so being autistic over it is even less necessary
 

JDR13

Arcane
Joined
Nov 2, 2006
Messages
3,930
Location
The Swamp
off the top of my head?
Witcher 3.

actually, deadfire is more recent

I remember it barely making any difference in the Witcher games. DA2 and DA:I let you pick pretty good world states, so I never cared there either. Haven't played PoE2 yet. I do think it was very important for Mass Effect though, and I "backed those up" I guess.

I think his point was just that modern games still do it.
 

Semiurge

Cipher
Joined
Apr 11, 2020
Messages
6,083
Location
Asp Hole
Religiously. I have full archives consisting of all save states from a playthrough, backed up on multiple external drives that I update frequently.
 
Last edited:

SlamDunk

Arcane
Joined
Nov 20, 2006
Messages
2,990
Location
Khorinis
yes.png


...and I even backup my backups.

But I do that only for Minecraft and only for one particular world that I've been on for 10 years, now.
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,169
I have started to use incremental backups too. So, even if I overwrite a savegame, I can always rollback to a previous version.
 

Ezekiel

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2017
Messages
5,373
Used to. I don't give a shit anymore. If I lose my data, I'll just start over. Rarely 100 percent anything anymore anyway. The exceptions are few and far between.
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
Only if I'm about to format. Why would I want to keep a save after I beat a game?
Because they promised your choices would carry over to Mass Effect 2!
 

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